Privates 1, CBC 0

New Years Day on Prince Edward Island brought a blizzard the like of which we haven’t seen in a long time. Fortunately the snow wasn’t damp so the power stayed on, and it was a holiday, so the only real hit was the New Years Day levees.

Turning to the CBC on New Years morning to find word about the levees, I was greeted instead by the dulcet tones of Bim and a special national music show. There was a scatterling of local-like news from Halifax on the hours, but otherwise CBC Radio choose to go national for the day, leaving the private radio stations with the job of informing Islanders about the day.

This morning I rolled out of bed at 8:00 a.m. fully expecting a returning Island Morning to give me a sense of what the day held: what’s closed, what’s open, how the Island made it through the storm.

But no. For a second day there was a national feed, with some inane holiday fluff hosted by Rita Celli.

So over to Ocean 100 I flipped, and found them on the case with a constant stream of updates about the weather, the closures, and how we were all doing. Even next door at KROCK they managed to get the closures in between the Robert Plant songs.

So here’s the thing, CBC Radio: either you’re a vital, local information resource, or you’re not. It’s bad enough that local news disappears every weekend, but to take four days off in a row during the biggest winter storm of the season means you’re abdicating your role to the privates.

I’m no big fan of “that was…, coming up…” private radio, but it clearly proved its worth this time around.